Hush
by Etoile de la Mer
Summary: Did you want me to take your hand first? Was that my sin? Was that what you couldn’t forgive? -Hojo tries to help a dying Vincent, but Avalanche is in pursuit.


Disclaimer for this and all subsequent chapters: Final Fantasy it the property of Square Enix/ Square Soft. I do not own Final Fantasy VII or any material related to it. I do own a copy of the game, but that's about it.

**Hush**

Chapter 1: Hojo

You are mine.

You have been for a long, long time. Maybe even always.

Now listen, be still and listen. I'm not here to hurt you. If anything, I'm the one person on this Planet that cares more for you than any other. Don't turn away, please don't. It's time to remind you, so while you lay there bound, helpless, and masking your fear with hatred, listen. It's time for you to wake up. Your lingering in the twilight lands made of true memories and subconscious anxieties has to end now. Your body which you seem to like to abuse can't take this any longer. You'll die if you don't stop.

That first day, do you remember it? We had just arrived at Nibelheim and I was just stepping off the truck and slipped. You, with your quick reflexes saved me from falling face first into the muddy front yard of our new home. You barely looked at me, just a quick catch and an absent minded inquiry about my health and you were off hauling boxes off the truck as your boss yelled orders. I was left with the lingering feeling of your hand on my elbow and your image burned into my mind.

Did you know I requested that you guard me? Probably not. You took one look at her and any remaining memory of me was wiped clear of your mind. I wasn't surprised. The comparison was hardly flattering. She was beautiful, wasn't she, with that long chestnut brown hair and those doe-like eyes. Her face could have inspired artists and believe me, as one who had a lot of time examining it, her body was nothing short of a delight. How could I compete? I barely rated a glance in the hall if you were with her, just an obstacle that had to be maneuvered around.

Still, I was patient. I just had to wait and you'd see, or I hoped you would. I saw that she cared for you, but not the same way you cared for her. She had been in love with your father. While you were spinning dreams of forever, she was grieving for what could never be. I watched, lonely and ignored from the sidelines of your life, waiting, waiting, waiting.

I remained discontented in my waiting for months, pinning for what I never knew I needed until a single thoughtless step had shown me. Patience though has grand rewards. Gradually, your eyes strayed in my direction, a quick glance, a nod, a fleetingly polite smile. I had become someone besides one of the nameless crowd that licked their lips like cats tasting cream when you passed. Then you went out to the mountains and saw the mako fountain. She pushed you away, probably swimming in old memories and grief, so you came to me. One question led to another until I found it odd if you weren't leaning on my door jam with one eye on her as we talked about everything important and nothing in particular.

You don't know how I felt the night you first invited me to your bed. I realized even then you were upset at her for some thoughtless slight and my body was no more than a vessel to pour your anger and pain into. I didn't mind. I understood and was even grateful that you had chosen me instead of taking your whirling emotions to a stranger. The next morning when you disappeared back into your make-believe world, I went back to mine.

You stopped visiting me though, but I understood that too. You had gone too far, shown too much to one who you still thought of as the wrong person. Who was I to know the fine lines your throat and jaw stretched into when you threw your head back in pure pleasure? Why should I know the taste of your sweat, the sound of your ecstasy, the feel of your body flexing against mine? There was no reason, not when you told yourself that you were in love with her.

Then you had to go and get stupid. How could someone who was paid to be observant not see that she would never marry you? Didn't you see the way her eyes would slide away when you talked about anything personal? Didn't you notice that she'd get quiet and sad at times watching you? Didn't it occur to you to wonder why she'd smile at you one moment, gracing you with her warmth, then flee from you the next nearly in tears? I didn't know which of you got more of my sympathy, you for your broken dreams or her for her dead ones.

So I stepped onto the stage of your little drama. As you both ricocheted away from that painful scene, I reached out to stop the damage before both of you ended up flinging yourself into the abyss of your pain. She was easy enough to deal with. All she wanted was someone, anyone but you, to take over, to take her hand and lead her. It didn't matter where I led her. She was too tired, too broken, too confused to care. Like a frightened, lost child, she only wanted someone to take her home. I gave her that safe place and then I turned to help you only to find you looking at me with hurt, accusing eyes.

You raged around the mansion, ducking your head so no one could meet your eyes, your mouth turning down into unhappy frowns, your shoulders slumping in defeat. At first, I thought it was over her, echoes of your doomed love. She was happy, skipping around smiling about dresses and flowers and lace, but the happier she was, the sadder you became. You don't know how many times I nearly called the whole farce off. She was dear to me, but you…oh you, I loved.

One day, after we'd all met for the weekly staff meeting, you gave yourself away, or maybe I finally spotted what I had been telling myself couldn't possibly be there. You lifted your head, maybe the first time in weeks, and looked at her as she walked out the door to pick up something or other for the wedding. It was a look of anger. For that moment, I saw you Vincent. You were angry and it wasn't all directed at me. You were angry at her too.

I took that look away with me as I gathered the innumerable scraps of paper that the company so loved to churn out and bequeath unto their employees. I contemplated it as I walked down to the labs to check the morning's tests. By the next day, I had realized I deserved your anger. I had caught her from her deadly fall, but I had left you, you who were a thousand times more loved, more dear to me than she could ever be. I had left you to fall to the rocks and lay there broken, crying, alone.

I didn't dawdle a second longer. I went to you and listened as you hissed your anger at me. It was deserved. I knew my guilt. I was at fault and all that you in your pain threw at me was hardly a teardrop in the sea of my own recriminations. What could you have added that I had not already acknowledged? It was your right though, as the one I loved best, to lay those accusations at before me. When you were done and all the poison was purged from the thoughtless wound I gave you, I gathered you up. You fought at first, like her, a child, cranky and tired from being alone in the cold too long, but then you relaxed and tucked your head under my chin with your eyes closed, safe.

However, you didn't forgive her. She was no threat to you. I told you that again and again and again. It wasn't her fault that the world was a harsh place that delighted in crushing light and hope. It wasn't fair to begrudge her the small happiness that she had finally found. She was a sweet thing under all that pain: kind, caring, warm.

You wouldn't accept it. She had rejected you, left you, took me away when you needed me. While part of you still tried to flog yourself into caring for her, your words kept echoing hollower and hollower. You curled around me in the night watching the door with jealous eyes expecting her to come and steal me away from you leaving you in the cold again. I soothed you. I traced the worried lines in your face until they disappeared from sight, but they reappeared when she stepped in the room.

When she revealed that she was pregnant, I could see the disappointment and fear in your eyes. I tried to explain that it was all an experiment, that if you checked, you would find that the child wasn't genetically mine. It was all the project. But fear of that cold had bitten deep into you. You pushed me away, pushed her away, then perversely turned and clung tighter. I spent weeks limping around, gritting my teeth from your need to claim what you considered yours. It didn't help, did it?

By the time the experiment had turned sour, you had lost all trust in me. You raged at me, demanding that I explain to you how I let this happen. How could I allow? How could I? And what was I to say? That it was all a mistake? That she and I had never shared a bed, that all she wanted was the marriage, the protection, the acceptance, but her body and her soul remained forever your father's? That the only mistake I had made was to allow her to use Jenova to conceive the child and every day since I had tried to figure out how to demand that she abort what was sure to be a horror?

So you believed the worst, and the worst is what we both got. While I was used to your outbursts, outbursts that cleansed and healed your soul, she was not. Fragile, nervous thing that she was, she must have heard our voices, heard your anger, and mistaken it for a true threat. There was no danger. I knew that. No matter how angry or hurt you were, I was always safest with you. She didn't know. She must have been frightened, terrified of losing her safe haven yet again, so she took what she thought was a necessary step.

She must have realized the second she pulled the trigger that she'd made a mistake. Maybe the look on my face as you fell to the floor at my feet as I stood shocked into numbness. Maybe she finally realized what had been standing in front of her all that time. Maybe she just had a flashback of your father's death. I didn't ever find out. How could I when she'd taken everything from me?

She tried to fix the situation, but she only made things worse didn't she? While I was busy trying to put all our affairs in order so I could join you in the lifestream, she went and did the abominable. She dragged you back. She took you from the peace and safety of the Planet's embrace and pulled your poor soul back into that mangled body. Can you blame me for acting poorly, for taking the one thing she had left in this world away from her? You were my greatest treasure. You were my everything. Of course I was angry. Of course I struck out at her in the most painful way I could think of, taking away her dear child.

In the end, it was lucky I did. Neither of us knew that Jenova could control those infected with her cells. It drove her mad, madder than she ended up being after your death and resurrection. What it did to her son was even worse. If a grown woman couldn't deal with the effects of Jenova, a child had even less chance. It was all I could do to keep him sane for years. I finally lost my solitary battle when he was sent off to Nibelheim to look into a faulty reactor. I'd warned everyone against that. I'd explained Jenova's side effects, but my heart wasn't in it. My heart was in a crypt in the basement of an old, gloomy mansion. In the end, what did I care if the insane child of a desolate woman destroyed this sorry world if it meant that I could be with you again? To be honest, I helped him the best I could, only to turn around and look into your furious eyes.

I'd failed you again. It was only right that Jenova ate the rest of my mind and you shot me. Justice. Perfect justice. I only hoped it brought you peace.

Only it didn't end there did it. One stupid mistake. One small error of judgment and we were both pulled into the nightmare of an ill-programmed, fragmented nightmare. I created that program to ensure that Project Jenova would not be repeated, that all data would be devoured by a self-aware program that would spend eternity keeping that monstrosity at bay. I miscalculated though. What was to be my final act, my parting gesture of apology to all those I had harmed, became bent and shattered by the very cataclysm that moments before I had been celebrating.

Instead of protecting you, protecting this world, it lashed out. You don't know how horrified I was when I realized what was happening. All those people, devoured by the one thing I had left behind to care for them. And you, caught in the center of it torn between your dream-memories, her research, and my mistakes. It was my greatest fear given form.

I was there you know, standing in the shadows above you and that monstrosity, Weis. I didn't know if you, or anyone would make it in time to save this world, a world that had regained its preciousness with your rebirth, so I had come to do what I could. In the end, all I could do was watch, biting my knuckles until they bled to keep me from screaming in worry as you battled. When it taunted you, I realized it was right. You weren't fighting in top form. Something was wrong.

Still, you pulled yourself up and did what you had to do. You saved this world. You saved your friends. You saved me. It was only right that I return the gesture.

That is the truth of our lives. Now rest, you need it.

Hush, hush, it's all right, just sleep. You aren't well and your body needs to recuperate. I'll take the restraints off later. I know they are uncomfortable and they make you feel powerless, but you don't need to fret over them. I only used them because you still haven't woken up all the way. You slept for longer than you should, an eon of nightmares and worries. I apologize. I should have checked on you sooner. I could claim that business kept me, but I don't like lying to you. I was afraid to go there and check. If you were still…

You are right to be wary. I haven't been the most diligent of lovers, but I still will not let you inadvertently harm yourself. I'll stay here and keep watch over you. I may not be young anymore and I may not look very intimidating, but I can see you safe through one night.

You can be angry with me tomorrow all you want. I don't mind, there, that's better, just relax and let it go.

Hush.


End file.
